Bronze Today

Most years I forget to make note until too long after the fact, but today is the eighth anniversary of my first post to Screenshot. I asked a couple of friends what I should do to mark the occasion, and one interesting suggestion was to comment on what weblogs I’m currently reading on a regular basis. It’s an interesting question, because looking back over my years of weblogging (1) I used to read a lot more weblogs than i do now, and (2) I used to maintain a list of favorites, whereas now I keep my bookmarks private. The first change is almost entirely due to no longer being a grad student. The second is due to bad memories of the explosion of the weblog “community” and some of the drawing up of sides that came out of who linked to whom. But it has been a while since I’ve made up a list of favorites, and there are some good sites that I’ve been enjoying recently.
Looking at the weblogs I visit on a regular basis, there are a few categories – I’ll offer you one from each set.
The huge ones that everyone reads – they don’t need plugs from me, but I will say that Boing Boing probably has the best staying power for me.
The old ones I’ve been reading since the 90s – a lot of them are gone, or have morphed into something other than what they were, but Bifurcated Rivets has been keeping on with the old-school Robot Wisdom style snippets and Ghost in the Machine continues to be an interesting mix of, well, everything.
Education themed – I found a whole bunch of these about a year ago, and the best are a good combination of useful insights and cathartic venting. Favorites include Learning Curves and New Kid on the Hallway. Not surprisingly, the summer is a bit of a downtime for these weblogs.
Feminist themed – my favorite in this catagory, Bitch Ph.D. actually overlaps a bit with the preceding catagory as well.
Craft themed – not martha seems to consistently find the coolest projects out on the web.
Pop culture themed – I’ve been reading Pop Culture Junk Mail forever and it’s a lot of fun. More recently, I’ve been laughing at (and not with) the comics over at The Comics Curmudgeon.
This isn’t everything by any means, but it’s a pretty good snapshot of the types of things I look at – this month at least!